July 20, 2012

"What sexbots will do is widen the already growing chasm between the sexes, until only the fittest of the fit... can successfully leap across it to woo a human companion in the way that our genetic overlord intended."

Writes Heartiste, noting that "fitness is whatever gets one’s genes to the next generation, whether beneficial to civilization or note." I got there via Instapundit, who got there via Helen Smith, who makes the present-day observation that "20% of the alpha males [get] about 80% of the women" and says:
Those men who have more trouble getting women turn to porn and seem to ignore or be oblivious to women. I wonder how Sexbots will further change the landscape?
Here's my long-term view of that landscape. As men get absorbed into virtual-reality sex, there will be sex machines for women, replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating (including many things that are too dangerous to pursue in real life about which they currently read voraciously). The women, further relieved of motivation to form loving partnerships with men, will turn more and more to the government for support. Witness "The Life of Julia." There will be more and more of that as men depart from real life and submerge themselves more deeply in machines and women consequently feel more entitled to the government's functioning in the role from which men have escaped.

Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?

Will women still want to raise children? Some will, especially when it is well incentivized with government support brought about by unstoppable female voting power. We will have our choice of prime semen for artificial insemination. I'm sure the government will provide us with free services and facilitate our selection of the genetic traits we think will make the best children. Who knows what the next generations will be, as mothers produce children not because they found love from a man, but because of their ideas — possibly delusional — about what would make an excellent child? That's a new experiment. Presumably, in a world where men absent themselves from the real-world life of love and relationships, these women will choose, overwhelmingly, to have daughters. Those daughters will grow up and become part of the Electorate of Julias, further depressing any political power for men.

As this process goes on, perhaps that 20%/80% split Dr. Helen observes will be the actual ratio of men to women. But those men will not be alpha men. They won't even be beta men. And the men in the women's sex machines will be The New Alpha+++ Men. There will be no way to go back.

But this can only happen in America and whatever other free, wealthy, technologically advanced democracies there may be. So don't worry. It won't last that long.

98 comments:

Carol said...

Interesting predictions. Just as a sidenote, this fundamental disconnect between men and women has always been there, which is why traditional marriage is so important: it signified a willingness to forge a new familial bond in spite of the differences. It is the bridging of a huge chasm, actually.

It is sad that marriage came to be regarded as merely "natural" in the 50s and "conformist" in the 60s and "stifling" in the 70s and so forth. It is really a magnificent undertaking when done right.

Ann Althouse said...

"It is really a magnificent undertaking when done right."

You know what will be done right? Sex, by The New Alpha+++ Man, fully programmed with well-tested fantasies in the genre 500,000 Shades of Grey.

Some will remember the time when "grey" implied dullness and monotony, but it will be the new excitement, far beyond any purported "magnificent undertakings" that occasionally worked in the old days when women had to search for flesh-men.

campy said...

perhaps that 20%/80% split Dr. Helen observes will be the actual ratio of men to women. But those men will not be alpha men. They won't even be beta men.

They'll be sexbot repair-men.

KCFleming said...

In the US, thanks to 80 years of leftism, black culture is already in a matriarchy. The consequences are violent (e.g., Chicago, Detroit).

"Will women still want to raise children?"
Well, white liberals won't, and they will die out, as Steyn has pointed out. But other races and religions will fill the gap. See: Dearborn.

Interesting too how much matriarchy resembles Islam.

rehajm said...

replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating

This feminist fantasy is itself an elaborate story feminists find titillating, but that's all it is. A bit sad really, as it reads like the rantings of a child sent to his room and set on vengeance on mom and dad. If you're this hard up for a date, feminists would be better served learning what makes men tick, rather than inventing elaborate stories in futile attempts to force or scare men to conform to feminist ideals. But I guess it wouldn't be feminism then, would it?

vet66 said...

I wonder what the mark down will be on used sexbots? Lightly used with after-market add-ons to enhance the experience. Inter-changeabel parts to match your mood from "mandingo" to "poppy" depending on your mood.
For the trendy try our Electra and Oedipal line complete with rechargeable lithium diode batteries for the ultimate rush into the "Brave New World" of self-gratification. Boldly go where no man has gone before...

Make it so!
Good one campy! Very campy!

rehajm said...

As men get absorbed into virtual-reality sex, there will be sex machines for women..

There won't be sex machines for women. Men will invent and invent sex machines for men, then will be to busy to get around to inviting sex machines for women.

Anonymous said...

In other words, most people are passive cowards.

There will, on the other hand, always be rebels who prefer action and consequences to a life of passivity and cowardice.

All my life, I've struggled to understand the passivity and cowardice of most people. I'm built different. I crave action and slowly go insane whenever I try to fit into the world of passivity and cowardice.

The Heartiste site, which you've apparently just discovered, is a haven for passive cowards pretending to bravado... in the same fashion as feminists.

Fortuntely, I've met and been involved with wonderfully adventurous, tough and action loving women my entire life. My late wife, Myrna, loved and craved action and had absolutely no patience with cowards. God bless her, she was so much fun, so exciting and so challenging. She would brook absolutely no weakness or cowardice in me. She brought out the best in me, and I believe and hope I brought out the best in her.

As is always true in life, you get precisely what you pay for.

FleetUSA said...

There's an interesting article in the current edition of The Weekly Standard called The Pill Perplex

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/pill-perplex_648532.html

It fits in with this discussion and how society got off the tracks. It also deals with the non-sequiturs of liberal thinking.

wef said...

sexbots and porn are titillating footnotes to the larger point about demography and the endogenous culture that both trails and reinforces deeper reproductive trends. But, anyway, as the sayings go....

sterility is its own reward

and the future belongs to those who show up

pathetic, infertile white people clinging to their abortionist Right-to-Choose as consolation for being displaced by messy, fruitful brown people

sharia: it's for the children

KJE said...

Like men, some women want to watch the world burn...

Paddy O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paddy O said...

The Freewheelin' Sex Bot

KJE said...

There's a whole interesting narrative in the Dr. Helen/Hearstie crowd about how women are largely responsible, by their own choices, for the current state of male/female relationships and interaction. Mary and Carol both touched on it in the comments above.

It's an interesting theory, although at times it feels just a little like listening to conspiracy theorists.

I practice family law, and sometimes, those ideas that sound a little like conspiracy theories seem all too plausible. Has no fault divorce, the pill, access to abortion, and the feminist movement built a perfect storm where we are conditioning women to be sociopaths in regard to their relationships with men?

I've seen plenty of divorces where one spouse was clearly a bad actor. And I've also seen a fair number of divorces where there doesn't seem to be any bad actor, but that the wife feels "entitled" or "unfulfilled." There is seldom anything concrete to substantiate that allegation. But you don't need it legally.

I'm not advocating that we go back to the rule of thumb (which, itself was probably considered liberal bullshit when first espoused), but we certainly tolerate, if not advocate all sorts of things in the name of diversity and tolerance.

Why can't we recognize and honor that difference in marital and family relationships? And why did we stop? All this was set in motion long before I was born.

Mike said...

I don't think sexbots are going to be a big deal. What people, including men, want is intimacy, which you can't get from a machine. The existence of modern sex devices has not cut into the amount of sex going on.

If you ever did develop a sexbot that could pass as human (and therefore be desirable), it would almost certainly have to be given the same rights as a human.

Astro said...

as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us

Assuming these statistics (small sample size, unknown sampling methodology) are true, I think you're misinterpreting the statistics. Are 80 percent of the men in the US permanently celibate? Lifelong bachelors? I don't think so.

I'm pretty sure most heterosexual men are very interested in women, and would prefer a human over an artificial partner.

Think you've got it backwards: It's the women who are demonstrating their lack of interest in (most) men. It's women choosing the alphas, leaving behind that other 80%.

That doesn't mean that those 80% aren't having sex with women, they're just having it at a much lower frequency than the alphas.

pdug said...

Sexbots for men barely need AI now. Sexbots for women? How complicated will the AI need to be?

(ob captcha "please prove you are not a robot" :: will rape fantasy ladies sexbots need a captcha to prove you ARE a robot?)

chickelit said...

Some will remember the time when "grey" implied dullness and monotony, but it will be the new excitement, far beyond any purported "magnificent undertakings" that occasionally worked in the old days when women had to search for flesh-men.

50 strings of pearlescent grey, prized by matrons--see men for details.

Anonymous said...

Shouting Thomas makes a good point,


"In other words, most people are passive cowards.

There will, on the other hand, always be rebels who prefer action and consequences to a life of passivity."

It made me envision a future in which those who prefer sex with humans form an underground network, meet in the dark of night, and are labeled deviant. But then realty sets in, naw it won't happen, flesh and hair and eyes and warm skin, breath on your neck.....human to human.

Peter said...

"Will women still want to raise children?"


There'll be no need for actual sexbots when the same can be accomplished (but with amped-up intensity) with direct stimulation to the brain.

Children? They will be decanted from artificial wombs, and raised by the state.


"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't."

chickelit said...

Allie pondered: It made me envision a future in which those who prefer sex with humans form an underground network, meet in the dark of night, and are labeled deviant.

cf. Titus

Chip Ahoy said...

Ah yes, it all so clear to me now. You have lifted the veil that has heretofore held the future in concealment. Just like that. Lifted.

I do see it clearly.

It will develop that those things least liked by women, the hard things, the low tech things, plumbing, electricity, construction, road building communications, anything involving math, any hard thing involving mechanics, electronics, a straight line, hooking up technology and the like, anything oily and greasy or dusty and dirty, all things involving trash and other smelly unpleasantries will devolve to men. Oh wait.

The separation that already exists along those lines will expand so that among women those skills and traits become premium. And as futurey and unrealistic as that sounds such reversals from lowest to highest have already occurred many times. I am thinking, I am not making this up, I read it somewhere, it could happen, notably following the plague whereby peasant evolved to noble over a few generations through the acquisition of land and title by controlling pools of labor.

So alongside all that premium sperm selecting from clinics ladies get from alfa males beating off into cups, imagining that part too, on the side they're seeking the rough trade and getting us at a premium 'cause us rough tough tattooed motorhead guys don't come cheap. Babe.

Lucius said...

Dystopias within dystopias.

I assume heartiste was being a bit playfully provocative with the sexbots (I mean, apart from his more considered provocations). It was interesting, watching his largely Evo Psych commentariate dispense with the usual line of predictions about lopsided fertility and crippling underclass domination, to muse upon a future instead of perfect sexbots.

Every time someone countered that sexbots would never replace women, someone else would come back with-- humorously or not-- some variation of "no man, you don't get it-- they'll be *perfect*".

I assume Ann is doing her own tongue-in-cheek version of this, esp. since her own finale deftly revolves back to the Evo Psych crowd's dayjob dystopia: the global, fanaticized, resentful underclass.

All the same, I must humorlessly point out that women could *never* build these damn machines for themselves, so they'd be utterly dependent upon men to leave them some sort of tablescrap virtual sexdystopia.

Assuming we can drag ourselves away from our *perfect* sexbots long enough. What are you offering, wench, some polite conversation?

Chip Ahoy said...

Excuse me. Hi. This is Chip. I've been time traveling again and caught up to this thread. I mean caught down to this thread.

Okay. What I just said up there really is happening. Mostly. Sort of.

The thing is, it's hard to tell because it gets so gay it's a little hard to tell what's going on. Everybody's gay. I mean everybody. That's basically normal. I think. Look, it's hard to tell, but it's a lot more gay now than before. Maybe everybody is Muslim I don't really know but all the guys are together at the gym. Everybody does hard core workout programs and at this point they're pretty much all preening because every last one is already totally buff and don't even go back there in the showers. The gym is mostly showers.

SteveR said...

They fantasize they want Javier Bardem from Eat, Pray and Love but bitch like hell when he arranges for a boat trip without her permission.

dvlfish13 said...

"The women, further relieved of motivation to form loving partnerships with men, will turn more and more to the government for support."

If any of this actually came to pass, I can't imagine that anyone would be doing any actual work anymore.

I mean, it's possible to imagine a commercially successful female sexbot without strong AI or the capacity to operate independently. Guys really don't ask for a lot when it comes to women (the key things are "pretty" and "willing to boink me" - almost all the other qualities are negative, not fat, not in too much debt, not a known psycho, etc).

But if we're talking about something that could appeal to female fantasies, my sense is that it'd be able to do useful work in addition to its extracurricular activities. I mean, I think it'd have to be a genuine "player" - a socially important person. If you could build that, you could build work robots, combat units for the off world colonies, administrators, etc. Human beings would only do actual work as a hobby. Given this, a lot of the sting would be taken out of politics.

Pettifogger said...

Sexual fantasies will probably always be with us, but surely when realized, the fantasy will turn out to be less than imagined. I have to believe that, in the end, people of both sexes will want the human connection that can come only from another person.

Anonymous said...

Chickie! Are you comparing me with or contrasting against Titus? Great, now Edutcher will come along and say I'm Titus's sockpuppet.

SteveR said...

In the year 2025

You won't need no husband, won't need no wife

You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too

From the bottom of a long glass tube

Sorun said...

Sexual fantasies will always include other humans because they will always be the most dangerous.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

This concept makes me really wish for an EMP event that will wipe us out and send us back to a pre industrial age.

If we allow this shit to continue.....we deserve to be severely punished as a culture and a species. Culling the herd.

KJE said...

DBQ: How do we re-write this to fix it? Genuninely (and not sarcasticly or tounge-in cheek) curious.

ricpic said...

Frankly I don't see how the dystopia Althouse predicts, in which men and women disconnect from each other, could go on for any length of time. In short order there would be huge internal withdrawals from that misery, as new variations on the eternal attempt to make one of two are tried. The analogy is imperfect, but it would parallel the coming sundering of the United States, as more and more withdraw from a politically imposed inhuman order.

edutcher said...

All of this presumes no crash, which I think is the fly in the ointment.

When it comes, all of this Fritz Lang stuff comes crashing down.

AllieOop said...

Chickie! Are you comparing me with or contrasting against Titus? Great, now Edutcher will come along and say I'm Titus's sockpuppet.

No, Titus has higher standards.

And writes better.

Sorun said...

replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating

The sexbots for women will be whispering sweet nothings about "30% off on shoes at Macy's."

Franklin said...

Sounds like these predictions irritate Ann more than most stuff does. Why?

Anonymous said...

See what you've done Chickie? Now Edutcher says Titus has higher "standards" than I. Different standards perhaps, strange hearing this come from Edutcher who hates gays. I guess he also hates people who have more and better sex than him too.

Maybe the blond needs a sexbot.

Christopher in MA said...

Somewhat OT, but not really:

I once saw a "Next Generations" episode where Geordi, having a problem with the Enterprise's engines, called up a hologram of the woman who had designed them and fell in love with her. Everything was fine until a later episode, when the real woman showed up and found the holographic program.

The script touched very vaguely on the idea of how it would feel to find out someone called up your holographic image for sexual fantasies, but never delved into the real quandaries of such technology. Would it be considered rape? Improper use of intellectual property? Could you "sell" the rights to your image for people to have sex with?

In any event, by the time real sexbots are on the market, we'll be extinct. So it's all a tempest in a teapot.

Paul said...

the present-day observation that "20% of the alpha males [get] about 80% of the women" . . . ???

Come on, Ann. Does that claim stand up to scrutiny? Really? Think about it: according the U.S. Census Bureau, about 54% of women age 18 and over are married and living with their spouse; another 15% are married but not currently living with their spouse (e.g., spouse is away for work or on military duty abroad) or else widowed. That comes to 69% of adult American females in all.

For the 80/20 rule to have even an ounce of credibility, you'd have to assume that ALL of the 31% of women who aren't married or widowed are sleeping with the alphas, plus the bulk of the married and widowed women as well. Do you really think that such a claim is even remotely credible?

Presumably, whoever coined the 80/20 rule was a PR flack working for an alpha male . . .

Carol said...

"women could *never* build these damn machines for themselves, "

That's okay, teh gheys will have that covered.

Christy said...

Not to worry. Scientists have yet to get a handle on human pheromones and ultimately that makes all the difference. At least in my world, YMMV.

test said...

If we take more than two steps down this path our society as we know it will end, although not in the way those who view your description as positive hope. If women try to form a matriarchal society and use government to pay for it the men will simply stop working. They'll work under the table and accept a lower standard of living. Living cheap is easy when you don't have a family to support. Men aren't going to become willing drudges whose labor is taken to support women and their children. This is a recipe for economic chaos.

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

BTW, the "Life of Julia" crap was given a gutless PC title. It should more appropriately have been "Life of Shanice", or something like that.

Bet there was a long meeting at the White House, before settling on the Whitest name they could think of.

campy said...

If women try to form a matriarchal society and use government to pay for it the men will simply stop working. They'll work under the table and accept a lower standard of living.

Then they'll be herded into camps and forced to work.

Christopher in MA said...

So, campy, Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS will be a documentary now?

Anonymous said...

Who's going to be making the money to pay the taxes to support this "government of Julia"? The men are checking out, taking low income, low stress jobs that leave them lots of time to play video games, there isn't going to be much that the women can steal from them to fund their desires.

So does the US enter a death spiral where the populace gets poorer, the government takes more so it can "help" the poor, thus making the populace poorer?

Hello "Atlas Shrugged".

The Republicans could have a "permanent demographic majority", because they're the party of producers. The Democrats are the party of the parasite, the moocher, the looter. If you're going to have more than 50% of the country living off "the government" (the tax payers) for any length of time, either those tax payers have to be phenomenally productive, or you have a rather short race to the bottom and crash, with members of the looting class forced to fight each other for money.

The losers in those fights have no reason to vote for the Party giving goodies to other people, but not them. Hell, we're already seeing that start, take a look at Scranton, PA.

Single women vote Democrat because there are enough married couple to loot that the Democrats can play mommy, daddy, and husband for those single women. The more single women there are, the less the Democrats will be able to provide the goods.

RJ said...

"Will women still want to raise children?"
Well, white liberals won't, and they will die out, as Steyn has pointed out. But other races and religions will fill the gap.


Time to re-watch "Idiocracy".

DADvocate said...

trouble getting women

It's not the trouble getting women, it's putting up with their shit.

what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women

They already do that out of simple selfishness.

test said...

"campy said...
Then they'll be herded into camps and forced to work."

Not until they invent the T-1000.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

No tongues!!

Dust Bunny Queen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Geoff Matthews said...

Ann, what makes you think that this hasn't happened before?
Not necessarily with machines, but with the separation of sex from love and commitment?

campy said...

Not until they invent the T-1000.

Refresh my memory: was that the Summer Glau model? ;)

chickelit said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...
No tongues!!

Your video reminded me of a new little routine at our house. We recently adopted a little rescue dog--I say little as in Maltese little. The thing sleeps on my daughter's bed and every night when I go in to say goodnight the dog insists on licking my face. One time I laughed so hard I opened my mouth a little. Next thing I knew we touched tongues! Eww, where has that tongue been! my daughter said, laughing.

leslyn said...

Wall-E!

BarrySanders20 said...

Wow. I detect frustration.

Pretty silly premise in all.

Are there that many women sitting around dreaming of being ravished by an "alpha male" (robotic or otherwise)? And you believe that 4or 5 women are being serviced by one alpha. What a busy, productive man.


As Brian's mom said: "Sex, sex, sex, that's all they ever think about..."

Anonymous said...

Yeah DBQ, can you imagine trading spit with a sexbot, could be dangerous.

Anonymous said...

Fager and Evans:

"...
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube' Whoooa.."

Nice tune.

Joe said...

Wow, lotta buzz over a deranged fantasy of a deranged man. There are no impending sex bots; moreover only a minority of men would be interested, including, apparently, the pathetic, misogynistic, so-called pickup artist community.

The original article isn't an analysis, but a fantasy by these PUA asshats.

jungatheart said...

pduggie said...
Sexbots for men barely need AI now. Sexbots for women? How complicated will the AI need to be?
-----

Women are aroused by tactile, olfactory, and visual stimuli, to which a machine could never come close. But the payday is knowing someone is with you in the infinite void. The machine would only be useful to the craven.

test said...

"campy said...
was that the Summer Glau model? ;)"

It's blasphemy to refer to Summer as anything other than River.

Ken Green said...

You're right Ann, it won't last long.

I think that it's becoming absolutely clear that the feminist revolution will lead to the extinction of Western civilization, leaving the future to more fertile people with less empowered female populations.

One presumes that those populations will learn the lessons we did not, and will avoid things like hormonal birth control, women's voting rights, women's access to higher education, etc.

Just as glad I'm 51, and probably won't be around to see the US flag with a star and crescent on it.

Eric said...

Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?

Nothing. But it won't matter, since you can't get blood from a turnip. You're thinking women will vote themselves money from the men who aren't paying any attention to them. But the men will be too busy masturbating to produce anything that could be taxed.

My prediction is this will go on for a few generations as the wealth accumulated over the last 400 years or so is completely depleted. After that we'll be a much larger version of Pakistan.

Ann Althouse said...

"All the same, I must humorlessly point out that women could *never* build these damn machines for themselves, so they'd be utterly dependent upon men to leave them some sort of tablescrap virtual sexdystopia. Assuming we can drag ourselves away from our *perfect* sexbots long enough. What are you offering, wench, some polite conversation?"

You're missing the part about the government. These machines will be built because we will demand gender equity (and then some). We have the political power. We control the taxing and spending. Incentives will be tweaked until we get what we want.

Anonymous said...

Ken Green, maybe man's first mistake was letting us get out of our corsets, it was all downhill from there.

Ann Althouse said...

"Sexual fantasies will probably always be with us, but surely when realized, the fantasy will turn out to be less than imagined. I have to believe that, in the end, people of both sexes will want the human connection that can come only from another person."

Yes, but the problem is that these elaborate fantasies for women will have created desires and expectations that no man could possibly replicate. I mean, look at yourself now: Are you prepared to put on a 50-Shades-of-Grey routine for a woman? Successfully?

Now picture a couple decades of development of fantasy life along these lines, augmented with virtual reality. The task of penetrating the women will become impossible.

Ann Althouse said...

"Sexual fantasies will always include other humans because they will always be the most dangerous."

No. The female fantasy life lived in virtual reality will involve things that will be too dangerous to attempt with another person, and the abandon needed to enjoy these things will entail exclusion of a real person, because that person would be too frightening.

virgil xenophon said...

Not the corsets, Allie, their chastity belts..lol

Ann Althouse said...

"So does the US enter a death spiral where the populace gets poorer, the government takes more so it can "help" the poor, thus making the populace poorer?"

Yes, of course, it's a death spiral.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Are you prepared to put on a 50-Shades-of-Grey routine for a woman? Successfully?

Last weekend my husband and I went shopping in Costco and stopped at a Barnes and Noble. At each place were these stacks and STACKS of 50 Shades of Grey.

Hubby says: What is this book that is everywhere?

I say: Porn for women.

Hubby: Oh, whatever.

Me: Ooooh look over there Salmon fillets....let's get some. And some Brie cheese too!

Food Porn!!!

Luke Lea said...

"Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?"

I thought it was the beta males who were complaining that women had no interest in them?

chickelit said...

Althouse fantasized: We control the taxing and spending. Incentives will be tweaked until we get what we want.

Utter bullshit. You got the numbers, but we got the guns.

But your humor is hysterical.

Luke Lea said...

That 80/20 rule only applies to non-procreative sex among sexually active unmarried young people. It has nothing to do with marriage and children. Why people pay attention to Roissy, a misogynist with a sociopathic imagination, is beyond me. Why Ann gets sucked in is easier to understand: it attracts hits. Shame on Ann. Get some standards, girl!

Anonymous said...

"Why Ann gets sucked in is easier to understand: it attracts hits. Shame on Ann. Get some standards, girl!"

7/20/12 1:45 PM

Oh how they love to bandy this " standards" bullshit around. When someone sees things differently they have substandard standards? It's enough for women to want to buy a sexbot for real.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Utter bullshit. You got the numbers, but we got the guns

Not all of 'em ;-)

Peter said...

"Sexual fantasies will always include other humans because they will always be the most dangerous."

What makes an amusement park ride fun is the illusion of danger- not the real thing.

It's the combination that makes the ride fun- your gut tells you you're in mortal danger but your head tells you it's reasonably safe.

A roller coaster ride is fun. Getting mugged, not so much fun.

Sofa King said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sofa King said...

An important PSA about this very topic, from the Space Pope.

chickelit said...

Luke Lea wrote: Why people pay attention to Roissy, a misogynist with a sociopathic imagination, is beyond me.

Applying my own litmus test, I have to disagree. What Roissy wrote 4 years ago about Palin and her female detractors seems prescient in retrospect: link.

chickelit said...

@DBQ: Duly noted.

Ken Green said...

Allie, Virgil, you can laugh as much as you wish, but I think it's become obvious that women's liberation and affluence have allowed certain traits that were adaptive in patriarchal environments of limited resources(that being the nature of human relationships since we evolved into modern humans) to become maladaptive, and as a result, society is becoming dysfunctional.

The tendencies to narcissism, alpha-seeking, material acquisitiveness, child nurturance, and other traits that were useful in securing a mate, surviving in hard environments, and reproducing are running amok in western societies that have severed women's need to have and keep a mate by turning the government into their mate.

William said...

I've known some women whose fantasy lives were so imaginative that they pretended I was an alpha male in order to slake their bizarre desires. I have a good sense of humor and was willing to go along with the joke for awhile, but that alpha male crap, while fun in the bedroom, is very wearying in real world settings. I've got better things to do with my life than conquer the world.

n.n said...

Perhaps the natural order is subordinate to the human ego. This changes everything and nothing, at least for the foreseeable future, during which time our arrogance will continue to be tested and found unmerited.

Anonymous said...

"Women are aroused by tactile, olfactory, and visual stimuli, to which a machine could never come close."

Why? You think we can't make a machine that smells and feels like a human? Trust me, there's lots of companies working hard to do just that (perfume manufacturers, artificial limb makers, ...). "Look like" is pretty much already done.

IOW, dream on.

chickelit said...

Relax gregq--I think deborah was just being dismissive towards the notion of studbots. No reason to sound all threatened.

Bruce Hayden said...

Nothing. But it won't matter, since you can't get blood from a turnip. You're thinking women will vote themselves money from the men who aren't paying any attention to them. But the men will be too busy masturbating to produce anything that could be taxed.

There are good reasons why most Nobel prizes in the sciences to to men, and why most fortunes are built by men (and, often spent by women). Men are typically much more willing than women to focus on work for the long hours over the many years it takes to succeed in these endeavors. They are far more willing, on average, to work 80 hours a week for years, if not decades, to achieve their dreams. Or, at least if not on average, at the highest levels. Which is why almost all of the gender gap in pay disappears when researchers control for time spent at work each week and years spent working hard to achieve their goals.

But, as is becoming ever more evident with the slacker generation of young men, they only do this when motivated by wives and family. A lot of them choose to play instead of working, at least a good part of the time, when they see the chances of long term marriage receding into the distance. Why get married, if the woman is going to take to the cleaners in a couple years anyway? And, why work, when other women (i.e. Julia) are going to sponge off their hard work, voting themselves largess at the expense of the foolish men who do work hard?

The other thing to keep in mind with this trend is that wives and families also civilize males. Without such to get them to sacrifice for the benefit of their families, young males often tend to run in adolescent packs (even when they are often well-beyond adolescence). The most obvious examples are seen in the Black communities where so many of the younger males are on the streets selling drugs and terrorizing the community, until they get locked up in prison.

Mentioning prison, one of the notable statistics is that most of the males in prison did not have their father in the house when growing up. Often, no continuous male mentor figure either. Women do ok at raising kids, up to maybe 10 or so, but after that, fathers do much better, on average. Why? The boys need limits and respect, while the girls need respect and fatherly love. They most often cannot get that from their mothers. Most boys seem to need limits much more than they need a friend. And, they need someone or something to rebel against. So, if they aren't getting that from a father figure, they will often rebel against society, and let the police set the limits they seem to crave.

Eric said...

But, as is becoming ever more evident with the slacker generation of young men, they only do this when motivated by wives and family.

That was my point. If women start having trouble competing with sexbots, there are going to be a whole lot of young guys who don't see a compelling reason to get up and go to work. Women can vote themselves all the tax money they want. From each other.

chickelit said...

The women of the future, having controlling interest in the means of production and goverment, could always mandate that men's sexbots were just programmed likenesses of Andrea Dworkin. Consequently, a huge black market for illicit sexbots would arise, and men would have to do taxable work to afford them. Either that or they could turn to a life of crime, preying on women.

Eric said...

The women of the future, having controlling interest in the means of production and goverment, could always mandate that men's sexbots were just programmed likenesses of Andrea Dworkin.

They could certainly do that, if the wanted to be on the receiving end of violent revolution and subsequently stripped of any political power.

chickelit said...

They could certainly do that, if the wanted to be on the receiving end of violent revolution and subsequently stripped of any political power.

Only rogue females could break the monopoly of their sisters and tip the electoral balance against their majority sistren. Such females would be subject to "mean girl" ostracization, though they likely would be amply rewarded by males in terms of craved attention.

Tari said...

I can't decide who is the bigger idiot, this guy or his friend "Vox" - another one who Dr. Helen likes to listen to. Why we all want to waste time discussing this subject with 2 guys who have obviously spent very little time getting what they claim to (ahem) enjoy a lot of is beyond me. They need to get out more - perhaps to a few "red" states, where all the normal people live, work, marry, raise children, etc. I think all this robot sex exists only in their overheated, tiny, masturbating minds.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

The Althouse troll is the best troll.

Nice to see Althouse going after the new masculinist ideology. It's a knee-jerk reaction to feminism with nothing to recommend it. Its adherents are a bunch of self-pitying losers who write Penthouse letters for the internet.

I've thought about how ridiculous it is to extrapolate elaborate social theories out of men having a hard time getting laid.

Reducing the human race to sex and power is as flawed as reducing us to economic behavior. It's nuts.

AlanKH said...

How do gender feminists and sexbots differ? Sexbots aren't misoandrists. How are they alike? Neither can express genuine affection.

Score one for sexbots.

(my Captcha is "likLice" - that sounds icky.

ed said...

Sex robots?

Why bother? Direct neural connections into the human brain will occur long before viable sex robots ever appear. And with direct neural connections you can have -any- fantasy you want without having to take the robot into the cleaners or having it repaired.

Want to be the dragonslayer hero? You can. Want to be the one true lover of Marilyn Monroe? No problem. Want to be homerun king in the 9th inning of the World Series? Sure thing.

That doesn't even include the incredibly addictive effects of neural stimulation, not -simulation-, of the brain. Rats wired to electricity starved themselves to death from repeatedly pressing the button to stimulate their brains and not the button that dispensed food.

Science Fiction even has a term for these: Wireheads.

Joe Schmoe said...

So while you women are being ravaged by your sexbot, will you need a safe word to use before it gets too rough? What if your robot's voice recognition software or hardware has a glitch?

Those things would be recalled the first second after a woman was mutilated by an out-of-control, buggy sexbot.

The regulatory hurdles alone to release such a product in the US will stall it for decades. Sounds like a job for Jocelyn Elders.

Ann Althouse said...

"So while you women are being ravaged by your sexbot, will you need a safe word to use before it gets too rough?"

I'm picturing a full-body enclosure that will have buttons under the fingers, but I'm sure something very sophisticated could be developed that could distinguish twitches of real fear from twitches of sexual pleasure.

But when I write my science fiction masterpiece, I'll have the machine fall short and the designers of the machine prosecuted for rape. That would be a nice plot twist.

Kirk Parker said...

Ken Green (and all the rest of you doomsayers):

No, there will never be a start and crescent flying over the US. Long before that, those who really care about this place will rouse themselves and put a stop to... a lot of things.

It won't be pretty, not at all; but on the other hand it won't devolve into The Terror, either--I don't think that generation will have any bigger problem doing what needs to be done and then returning to lead normal lives, than did "the Greatest Generation".

Right now, we're in that period described by Jefferson thus: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." But when it becomes insufferable, watch out! Americans know how to fight, and it's not just the Scots-Irish among us, either--I know both nth-generation African-Americans and immigrants from Egypt and the subcontinent who will be standing right there with the descendents of John Sanford of Rhode Island and the nameless (and named) hardy stock that James Webb wrote about, throwing off what needs to be thrown off.